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One of the Biggest Surprises in the History of American Letters
Why loyalty is like magic
The New York Times called him “Mr. Cinderella.”
Imagine you’re a drummer in a touring rock band who takes a break and indulges in a summer writing class at Skidmore College in Sarasota Springs, New York. Your instructor is the Pulitzer prize-winning author, Marilynne Robinson.
You’ve been an avid reader your whole life and you have a degree in English, so why not take a workshop to refine your prose?
You hit it off with Robinson, who you learn is an instructor at the famed Iowa Writer’s Workshop. Inspired by Robinson’s writing and teaching, you apply to the Iowa Writer’s Workshop and, despite their intense selectivity, you get in.
You graduate two years later with an MFA and a slender manuscript about a dying clock repairman, who reminisces about his father, Howard, a tinker. It’s literary fiction, so the story is short on plot but rich in character development and explorations of family, love, loss, faith, the passage of time, and the beauty of nature.
You send the manuscript out to several agents and editors in New York, which results in a series of rejections.
The manuscript sits inside your desk for three years until, out of the blue, a…
